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5DoP #4 – Ixcanul (2015)

There’s a sort of cinema that is filled with apparent good and honest intentions, specially when it comes to the idea of the countryside or the populations that are less privileged in comparison to the rest that live in the same territory. This is usually reserved to films about indigenous populations that still live in America, those that strive to make a cultural mark in the landscape of the place in which they no longer have the voice or the power that they once had. Sure, it’s valuable to put their struggles and their language and culture in the forefront of certain cinema, but when it isn’t made by the communities themselves, it’s time to maybe take a step back and wonder if the uncompromising point of view is actually that, specially if the almost foreigner look actually helps and if the portrayal is accurate.

In the particular case of ‘Ixcanul’, the focus is the indigenous tribe of Guatemala, and a young woman that is being married by his family to a man that will achieve supposed success by traveling to the United States. She is also constantly connected to the nature that surrounds her, the animals, the trees, the wind and the nearby volcano that looms over every wide shot of this film. In more than a couple of ways, it overstates the presence and importance of nature to the people that live there, and while being ritualistic, it kinda only understands them through that notion as if they were savages that couldn’t know better. That ignorance is played all the way through the end, where the deceive of the protagonist and her family drives the main conflict of their relation to the Spanish speakers from Guatemala, specially regarding the way that they take advantage of a knowable language barrier.

There’s a beautiful use of light, color and the overall cinematography is alright, but it serves only in the concept of bonding with nature, and how those elements are used for a symbolic telling of a social construct and issue that undermines the overall experience. The volcano with its warmth and presence represent the maternity of the protagonist, the father figure chopping wood as if not to chop his own daughter, the hens and their eggs as a representation of motherhood that becomes truncated, and the greens as well as the reds that permeate everything. It all leads to an overall sensation that nevertheless never amounts to anything that would make it worth the effort and experience, as the motherhood elements don’t establish much else beyond the obvious. The only truly interesting aspect of this, and also saving grace, while also putting it in more mainstream and less interesting waters, is the character that plays with the language barrier problem.

A truly evil character that rips and scams his own family for his benefit, and it also serves as the way that the film delves into pressing and important social issues in today’s Guatemala, but most times than not, the ritualistic and mystical approach is mostly exploitative and deprives it from any emotion, while also positing its main character as someone with no true free will, which at some points could be an evidence of its social status, but when it comes down to the telling of this story, I truly wished that the liberation was the selected path, but alas it wasn’t, and thus made it immediately less interesting in my eyes.

Amicus Productions: Horror-Scifi

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)
The Skull (1965)
Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)
The Psychopath (1966)
Dalek's Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)
The Terrornauts (1967)
The Deadly Bees (1967)
They Came from Beyond Space (1967)
Torture Garden (1967)
The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970)
The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
I, Monster (1971)
Tales from the Crypt (1972)
What Became of Jack and Jill? (1972)Asylum (1972)
The Vault of Horror (1973)-- And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973)
From Beyond the Grave (1974)
Madhouse (1974)
The Beast Must Die (1974)
The Land That Time Forgot (1975)
At the Earth's Core (1976)
The People That Time Forgot (1977)
The Monster Club (1981)

Hammer Pictures: Horror-Fantasy-Sci Fi

The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (1935)
Man in Black (1949)
Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949)
Dick Barton at Bay (1950)
Four Sided Triangle (1953)
Spaceways (1953)
The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)
X: The Unknown (1956)The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Quatermass 2 (1957)
The Abominable Snowman (1957)
Tales of Frankenstein (1958)Dracula (1958)The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959)
The Mummy (1959)
The Stranglers of Bombay (1960)The Brides of Dracula (1960)
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
The Terror of the Tongs (1961)
Taste of Fear (1961)
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
Shadow of the Cat (1961)
Captain Clegg (1962)
The Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Paranoiac (1963)
The Damned (1963)
Maniac (1963)
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
The Old Dark House (1963)
Nightmare (1964)
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
The Gorgon (1964)
The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
Fanatic (1965)
She (1965)
The Nanny (1965)
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
The Reptile (1966)
Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966)
The Witches (1966)
One Million Years B.C. (1966)
Slave Girls (1967)
The Mummy's Shroud (1967)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Journey to Midnight (1968)
Journey into Darkness (1968)
The Vengeance of She (1968)
The Lost Continent (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (1968)
"Journey to the Unknown" (1968)Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969)
Moon Zero Two (1969)Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Crescendo (1970)
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)Scars of Dracula (1970)
Lust for a Vampire (1971)
Countess Dracula (1971)
Creatures the World Forgot (1971)
Twins of Evil (1971)
Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971)
Hands of the Ripper (1971)
Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971)
Vampire Circus (1972)Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
Straight on Till Morning (1972)
Fear in the Night (1972)
Demons of the Mind (1972)The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
To the Devil a Daughter (1976)
"Hammer House of Horror" (1980)
"Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense" (1984)
Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1984)
Beyond the Rave (2008)
Let Me In (2010)The Resident (2011)